To Join the Sea of Electrons...

I was poking around TV Tropes http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/HomePage  last night prompted not by boredom (as I usually am) but by someone giving me (and a blog I was on in general) a recommendation for a fan fiction for a fandom I'm not in but have read listed around the 'net.  (Apparently, it's pretty popular.  If I were a reader of the books it was based on and not just a casual watcher of the movies who forgets most of their content, I might give the fic a shot)...  Anyhow, since it's been Troped, I was clicking links from it about the author and such, as what happens when one browses TV Tropes, and wound up round-about reading about Transhumanism and the scientific quest for immortality...

... I remembered a PBS special I saw a long while ago that was narrated by astronomer/physicist Degrasse, I think... all about this thing and and shaking my head at one guy who was trying to extend his life by taking hundreds of vitamins and supplements every day to ward off aging and thinking "That guy's gonna get hit by a car."

Yes, I'm a stupid dumb-dumb non-scientist and a bit of a cynical bitch. Live with it.

Anyway, the special had all kinds of other physical immortality bids, including brain-uploading to software.  This very thing has been explored in some of the animes I've watched and loved. The title of this post is a reference to an episode of "Cowboy Bebop"   http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Anime/CowboyBebop?from=Main.CowboyBebop  .  One I've seen that takes it to 11 is Kaiba http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Anime/Kaiba?from=Main.Kaiba  (Linked from Tropes rather than main Wiki because I have the window open and it's handy). 

In addition to that, I remember recently reading a couple of articles about this stuff  (half news, half opinion) on Huffington Post regarding scientists thinking we are on the very cusp of just this sort of thing.  It's a pretty interesting idea, but I can't say I'm not a bit suspicious of the "Singularity" just because I can see it being the domain of the privileged that leaves out the disadvantaged (This was a major theme in "Kaiba" listed above.  I recall there being a revolutionary group dedicated to killing the physical souls/memories of the dead that existed in that universe just to get rid of the inequality of the rich abusing the system.  Death may be a bitch, but at least it's equal). 

My thoughts on the subject of death are rather weird... I *do* want to live forever, in a way,  but I trust a divine hand/spiritual matters for that more than I'll ever trust even the smartest of humans or machines. Even if the divine/spiritual does not exist, mankind has hurt me too much to have a lot of trust for it (yes, if it came down to it, I can easily see myself trusting in Nothing more than Humanity, especially since I suspect "eternity" might be subjective/a matter of perception, anyway).. Machines, well... I can't even trust those with my art files:  http://shadsie.deviantart.com/#/d5d09x9 Also, yesterday, I accidentally overwrote my awesome maxed-out I-can-climb-the-impossible-tower! save-file on "Shadow of the Colossus" because I wasn't paying attention, so.... trust my consciousness to a computer or to people running one?  Urgh!   Anyway, I probably don't deserve to live forever,  anyway.  I'm one of those cracked/insane people they'd weed out of the program real early...

That said, if I ever get the IQ-boost I need to write a decent fiction story on such a complex and genius-philosophy subject, I'm tempted to write something in which we're all minds uploaded into a massive computer-database or free-floating on the Internet or in the "sea of electrons"  and since we're all immortal and cannot kill each other anymore, we've achieved an unprecedented level of peace until... 

A million-year-long flamewar breaks out about whether or not Smurfs lay eggs. 

Or people's entertainment preferences. 

Or people get so bored that the collective computer consciousness starts increasingly becoming composed of  people doing nothing but sharing videos of cats and the occasional cat-brain that's been uploaded interrupting peoples' free-floating philosophy-sessions with plaintive cries of "Tuna!" or "Ear itchy! Scratch now!" (It doesn't matter if the cat has no body and no ears anymore... cats are cats).  



... Yeah. I'm too dumb and nuts to deserve to have my mind live forever in the material / electronic world. I sometimes think even self-awareness itself for me may be more of a curse than a blessing. 

The Adventures of Princess Poo-Poo

A bit of humor writing  - a story born from inside jokes between me and my significant other. 

I work part time at a horse farm and that's led to a weird narrative between us that has me as an anime-style magical girl fighting "In the name of the Poo!" and so forth. These little narratives include real life individual animals we know, with their personalities. (There's a clowder of barncats on the farm as well as the horses).  We keep talking about making our stupidity into a series of Flash animations (we'd need to teach ourselves Flash first) or a comic... since I kind of suck at comic-style art and since our little stupid-stories are rather incoherent to begin with, I decided to experiment with a flash-fiction short story.  I may or may not write more of these. It depends upon how destructive this stuff prooves to be toward reader's brains.

The following is very short and very stupid. You've been warned.

The Adventures of Princess Poo-Poo

Tale 1: A Girl and Her Rake

Evil can be found in the most surprising of places.  At an unassuming little farm somewhere in Pennsylvania lives a being of unfathomable power.  The farm raises and keeps horses – the most magnificent of beasts and celebrated poopers.  All of that poop has to go somewhere.  In the case of this little farm, it goes to a big pile on the property. 

What the owner and keepers of the farm do not know is that the pile, having sat a sufficient amount of time, has gained sentience.

A malevolent sentience. 

Its motives are not exactly clear.  It probably wants to take over the world or something cliché like that.  It broods upon the farm, sending out its fumes of pure evil and plotting…plotting…

One keeper of the farm knows of the danger in this smelly pile.  Most people see a mere stablehand who works part-time.  Truly, however, she is a protector – a lady-knight with a rake – and the only thing standing between the world and the forces of reeking darkness.  She is…

MAGICAL STABLEHAND PRINCESS POO-POO!

“You stupid, disobedient human!” 

A small black cat padded down the main aisle of the barn, her footfalls silent on the neoprene surface of the floor.    

“Not now, Grapple-Kitty!” the Stablehand said, shouldering her plastic-headed pitching-rake.  “I still have work to do.  I’m almost done.” 

“But I want your lap!  Now!” Grapple-Kitty complained loudly.  The Stablehand and her partner-in-life-and-sometimes-crime-fighting, Retail Man, had dubbed the feline “Grapple-Kitty” because of her strong, sharp claws.  She loved nothing more than the soft, warm lap of a seated human, but she could shred a lap in minutes if said human was not wearing many protective layers of clothing.  To cuddle her without military-grade body-armor was to invite tiny pinprick holes in one’s body – and that was the least of injuries she could inflict. 

The Stablehand, when she was Princess Poo-Poo, had taken to using the cat as a part of her toolkit.  She was, naturally, a grappling-hook.  Princess Poo-Poo could swing by the animal’s tail.  Another cat entered the barn, a tortoiseshell female nicknamed Poo-Kitten for her amazing ability to telepathically communicate with poo from any species.  Poo-Kitten kept tabs on all the goings-on around the farm. 

“It looks like a quiet night,” the pudgy, multicolored cat said.  “The horses are happy out in the fields and I’ve seen no sign of Lord Smellypyle’s machinations.”

“Alright,” the Stablehand replied.  “I guess it’s just one more stall to do, then I can sweep and meet Retail Man for dinner.  I wonder if he’s had a hard day protecting people from misplaced merchandise…”

Then, just as the Stablehand put her rake to a spat of somewhat-fresh horse manure, it began to shake and move. 

“What the fork?!” the young woman exclaimed.

“Danger!” Poo-Kitten declared, “That poo has been corrupted!” 

“Corrupted?” the Stablehand asked. 

“You should transform into Princess Poo-Poo right now!” 

Nuggets of manure began to crawl out of the main pile, brown and slow.  Little legs were visible upon them. 

“This must be part of Lord Smellypyle’s latest takeover plan!” Poo-Kitten yelped.

“What is this?” the Stablehand said, shivering, “It’s…It’s…. Spider-Poo!” 

Little road-apples with spider-legs began swarming all over the stable-stall.  They spilled out into the aisle.  The pile they came from was not exhausted. 

The Stablehand concentrated and began a chant:

No stench of turds or dark of night

Can hold back my will to fight

In the name of poo I will punish you!

I am Princess Poo-Poo!

Ribbons swirled around the Stablehand’s form, imbuing her with power and surrounding her with sparkles.  She was left in her normal clothes – jeans, muck-boots, a t-shirt and a flannel over-shirt, but now she had a broad pink bow on her chest.  It was made of the gel-like stuff used in air fresheners.  

She swung her mighty pitch-rake, now glowing with a white aura of power.  Poo-spiders crumbled before her, but they just kept coming.  Grapple-Kitty sunk her claws into Princess Poo-Poo’s left thigh and Poo-Kitten took refuge atop her head. 

As the mighty warrior swung her weapon at a poo-spider that jumped up to attack her face, she heard one of the barn doors open. 

“Retail Man, stay back!” Princess Poo-Poo shouted authoritatively. 

Too late. He’d come through the door in his business-suit and the spider-poo rushed him.  Oh, the carnage! Little poo-balls bounced all over him, shoving themselves into any open space and orifice they could reach, stabbing him with their little spindly spider-legs. 

Princess Poo-Poo roared and rushed to free her dearest partner.  Her rake when snick-a-snack! Poo broke like snow all over the barn.  Everything was lost in a diarrheic haze. 

Retail Man did not move.  “Speak to me!” Princess Poo-Poo pleaded.  The cats dislodged themselves from her person.  Princess Poo-Poo paused, bowed, and then stood, clutching her rake with a white-knuckled fist. 

“I will avenge you, Retail Man.”

“I’m not dead.” 

Princess Poo-Poo gasped.  Retail Man stood right beside her, adjusting his now brown-and-green-smeared tie.   “What happened?” he asked. 

“Sp-Spider-poo.”  Princess Poo-Poo choked out. 

“I guess I’ll get the cobweb brush.” 

“The spider-poo has been neutralized, your grace!” exclaimed Poo-Kitten.  “I sense no more malevolent entities.  I think I’ll go bother Mr. Big now.”  With that, she scampered off to meet one of the farm’s other cats, a huge tabby with thumbs named Mr. Big. 

Princess Poo-Poo looked at the colossal mess she now had to clean up. She gripped her rake and roared to the heavens. 

“SMELLYPYLE! I’LL GET YOU FOR THIS!” 

**********************

Join us next time for fun and adventure with a whole cast of characters:

Princess Poo-Poo - Defender of the Barn!

Retail Man – Superhero of the Business World!

Poo-Kitten – The cat who talks to poo!

Grapple-Kitty – With her claws of doom!

Mr. Big – Possibly a double-agent?

Dr. Bigaboom – The mysterious mad scientist!

Phoenix – The drunken horse!

The Great Bladder – Upset that he’s an evil bladder in a jar instead of a brain in a jar!

Lord Smellypyle – The evil dung heap!

And many, many more…. Maybe.